Christophe escressó:
> Hi everyone,
<snip bit about encounter>
Actually something bizarrely similar happened to me on a bus in Bournemouth
(lots of foreign language students), I held a conversation with a Spaniard
in a strange Italo-Franco-Hispanic Pidgin. I could have just spoken to him
in English, but I lied and told him I was French (well, he was cute and the
"confuzed foregner" act always seems to work...)
> First of all, I'm absolutely sure the man was speaking Peninsular Spanish
(he
> said himself: "soy español", I think it's clear enough :)) ). But his
Spanish
> had variations I didn't know they existed in Peninsular Spanish. First,
and
> that's the least strange of his dialect's features, all final /s/'s were
> deleted. Second, he didn't have the /T/ sound but used /s/ instead (at
least I'm
> sure he wasn't from Castilla. There they tend to over-use /T/ where /s/
should
> be used). Third, s between two vowels was voiced /z/ (so he was
pronouncing
> "nosotros": we as /nozotro/). But the strangest feature of it all was that
> instead of using "hacer" /aTEr/ for "to do", he was consistently using
/fazEr/,
> which made his Spanish dialect sound strangely Portuguese.
> So now I'm wondering where he came from in Spain. From the features I
described
> in his speech, I would say, somewhere in the south of Spain, near the
Portuguese
> border. But I may be completely wrong. It could be anywhere... Do you have
any
> idea? I'm thinking of the Galician dialect, but I have no idea what it
looks
> like...
Hmm, looks like Andalucian to me.
<snip>
> As for days names, I have no problem with the first five days (Only
Portuguese
> changed them to ordinal numbers, in all other Romance languages I know
they come
> from the same origin, only the position of dies changes sometimes). But
the
> weekend days (Saturday and Sunday) give me quite a few troubles. As for
Sunday,
> All the forms seem to come from either domínica (French dimanche, Italian
> domenica, Romanian dominica, Catalan diumenge, Occitan dimenge) or
domínicus
> (Spanish and Portuguese Domingo). Am I right? In Medieval (Christian)
Latin,
> "dies" could be masculine as well as feminine, so it sounds likely to me.
Even
> the strange /i/ vowel in dimanche and dimenge is explained through the
Catalan
> diumenge (a sound change /o/ -> /ju/ doesn't sound unreasonable to me). As
for
> Saturday, Spanish and Portuguese sábado and Italian sabato seem to derive
from
> Medieval Latin sáb(b)atum: S(h)abbat (I'm not quite sure of the spelling
in
> English). Romanian sambata, Catalan and Occitan dissabte seem to derive
from
> (dies) sábbata (but I thought sábbatum was a noun, so I would have guessed
> (dies) sábbati instead). Then comes the French form samedi /sam'di/. It
seems
> completely off this system. Does it derive from, say, sábbata dies, or
does it
> have another origin? When I've seen the Romanian form, I've realized that
a
> change /b/ -> /m/ is not unlikely, but I would have thought that it would
be
> regular, while I cannot find it anywhere else in French. So, does anyone
know
> the origin of the French word "samedi"?
SAMEDI (XIIe s.), du lat vulg. *sambati dies, comp. de dies <jour> et
sambati, gén. de *sambatum, empr. au grec sabmaton, var. de sabbaton
<sabbat>.
> Okay, that was a long post, but I think an interesting one, especially for
other
> Conromance langs inventors. I'm now waiting for you all's replies :) .
I've decided to keep the Classical Latin form, "saturni dies", giving
Arveunan saundí /sOn 'di/., which has a nice "faux ami" ring about it, I
think. FWIW the CL, not VL days of the week were borrowed by Brythonic
speakers, so we have de Sadorn and de Sul in cornish, from "saturn's day"
and "sun-day"
> Christophe.
>
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E souvein-te della veritát que se ja dissó,
And remember the truth that once was spoken,
Amer un autre es veder le visaic de Deu.
To love anonther person is to see the face of god.
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